The present invention relates generally to computerized systems and methods for facilitating the flow of capital through the housing finance industry. More particularly, the present invention relates to computerized systems and methods that may be used in connection with one or more of mortgage qualification, application, approval, underwriting and pricing.
When considering the purchase or refinance of a home, potential home buyers consult mortgage lenders such as mortgage companies, savings and loans institutions, credit unions, state and local housing finance agencies or the like to obtain the funds necessary to purchase or refinance their homes. These lenders, who make (originate and fund) mortgage loans directly to home buyers, comprise the “primary mortgage market.”
When a mortgage is made in the primary mortgage market, the lender has several options which include: (i) holding the loan as an investment in its portfolio; (ii) selling the loan to investors in the “secondary mortgage market” (which includes financial institutions, pension funds, insurance companies, securities dealers, and various other investors) to replenish its supply of funds; or (iii) packaging the loan with other loans and exchanging them for securities like mortgage backed securities which provide lenders with a liquid asset to hold or sell to the secondary market. By choosing to sell its mortgage loans to the secondary mortgage market, or by selling the mortgage backed securities, lenders get a new supply of funds to make more home mortgage loans, thereby assuring home buyers a continual supply of mortgage credit.
A secondary mortgage market purchaser finances the loans and mortgage backed securities it buys for its own mortgage portfolio by the sale of debt securities in the global capital markets. Working with investment banks, the purchaser sells its debt to both domestic and international investors such as central banks, pension funds, investment funds, commercial banks, and insurance companies.
In the housing finance industry, a need exists for new systems and methods to make the process of buying a home quicker, easier and less costly. Particularly, a need in the industry exists for a loan platform that would (i) enable non-traditional players to originate loans without having to build the requisite infrastructure, (ii) streamline the loan process to provide a positive consumer experience, (iii) lower the cost of the loan origination process and reduce the costs and uncertainty associated with managing credit risk, and (iv) create a competitive pricing structure where specific components of the costs and fees associated with the loan may, at the borrower's option, be aggregated or “bundled” with the loan principal.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a system and process which provide a potential borrower with (i) a meaningful and readily understandable, real time, anonymous assessment of the likelihood of being approved for a loan based on limited information provided by the potential borrower without the need to obtain a credit report or a collateral appraisal, (ii) an online, real time, firm underwriting decision on each loan product offered by the lender for which the borrower is eligible, regardless of whether or not the borrower has identified actual collateral (e.g., real property) for the loan, (iii) the opportunity to aggregate closing costs with the loan principal, (iv) an interest rate and points specific to the potential borrower based on the credit risk to the lender and secondary mortgage market purchaser posed by the borrower in connection with the loan products for which the borrower is eligible, (v) reduced loan fees and costs resulting from requiring only limited appraisal field work or no appraisal field work (or the waiver of certain processing steps based on the purpose of the transaction and the loan product types requested), as appropriate, and (vi) reduced documentation verification requirements. It is also desirable to provide systems and processes that minimize the uncertainty faced by the loan originator when dealing with the secondary mortgage market by providing the loan originator with the acquisition price it may expect to receive for an individual loan (not an aggregate of loans) in the secondary market from the secondary mortgage market purchaser. It is intended that all matter contained in the above description and shown in the accompanying drawings shall be interpreted as illustrative and not in a limiting sense.